


Velvet Yellow

by clear_as_starlight



Category: Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dema, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Based on a Twenty One Pilots Song, M/M, Magical Realism, Memory loss- kinda?, Minor Violence, Trench Era, Tyler is very confused, like really minor but just in case, more implied violence than anything, sorry tyler, there is one minor mention of vomiting, well loosely based on music videos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 02:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clear_as_starlight/pseuds/clear_as_starlight
Summary: Something warm, and soft and safe is placed into Tyler's hands. “Use this as a key,” Josh says.The soft object is a daisy.It is yellow.His heart pounds out one rhythm, and one rhythm only.Josh Josh Josh Josh Josh.Tyler is trying to escape the terrible grasping of Dema, but he needs to remember why he wants to first.





	Velvet Yellow

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo although i've written heaps of fanfiction, none of it has ever left the obsure folders on my computer before :p i'm super anxious about posting this, so i'll try not to get scared away, but constructive critisism is welcome :) Hopefully this isn't a small (or 6000 word) dumpster fire and makes sense outside my own head. It's only been edited by me, so pls let me know if there's any glaring mistakes.

Tyler thinks the boy is strange. This is strange itself, because usually nothing is strange; in fact, before now, Tyler has never attributed meaning to the word _strange_. It is a word that means very little, for nothing is allowed to embody it. Now he dredges it up from the depths of his memories, for here is a perfect opportunity to apply it. Tyler notices the boy is strange at roll call. This too is strange, because usually roll call is for _un_ noticing in particular, or at least, making sure you are unnoticing enough to stay unnoticed yourself.

So, for the boy to be strange, he has to be noticed, at a time that everyone is trying desperately to be unnoticed. Or at least, he has to not be trying hard enough to be unnoticed. Or just not trying at all.

Either way he is noticeable—and strange.  
Most oddly of all, he isn’t noticeable because of what he does do. He is noticeable because of what he _doesn’t_ do.  
He doesn’t cower as the bishops stalk among the grey clad Demans. In fact, he almost rolls his eyes.

He has a weird sort of energy to him, foreign and charged, even though all he is doing is kneeling.  
He just sort of _vibrates_ , like the air around him is electrified, or maybe he is, or maybe it is simply confidence. It is like air is drawn to him, or eyes, or he is drawn to them, drawn to strangeness and opposites and clarity.  
He has a nose ring, which Tyler doesn’t think is expressively forbidden, but also doing anything that makes you stand out is generally a terrible idea, a dangerous gamble, and also now that he thinks about it, he isn’t even sure anyone would be able to pierce it in Dema, and maybe the boy is new to Dema, which is strange and rare in and of itself, and now he’s been staring too long and—

The boy stares straight back at him and _winks_.  
Like, actually closes one eye and opens it again. Full on winks. 

Tyler flushes red right to his hair line, pink as it fades, clashing desperately with the atmosphere of the bishops, and deliberately focuses on the grey cobbled ground, trying his hardest to will away the blush, anything so that the bishops won’t stop in front of him. He can feel the strange boy’s gaze on him though, and in Dema, where everything is grey and black and dismal and dirty and wrapped in a fear tired bow, the gaze doesn’t feel grey.  
Tyler isn’t sure what to call it except strange.  
And terrifying.

He sees the strange boy again; but this time not at roll call. No, this time he’s working in the pits, as they all do, digging, digging, he doesn’t know what for; six days a week, though sometimes he swears it’s longer, that the bishops make up the days and weeks and months until it bleeds into nothingness, and emptiness, and if he knew how to, he’d stop.

But anyway, the boy is at the pits too, digging, digging, digging closer and closer to Tyler. Though there is nothing wrong with his digging—shovel down, kick, shovel up, repeat—it somehow is still wrong, like there is an impression of the boy behind the boy and his shovel, and the impression throws the shovel, and jeers, though the boy does no such thing.  
The shovel is alien in the boy’s hands, and in Dema, where shovels greet hands as friends should, or did, or had?, a shovel seeming alien in a hand is a non-occurrence. 

Then the boy speaks— _speaks_ —and the alien-ness of a shovel is promptly forgotten. 

“What’s your name?”  
_What’s your name?  
_ No preamble, no greeting, no hi, hello—not that anyone in Dema does that anyway. In fact, he isn’t sure where people would do it, or why, or how he might know that, and that is something to the boy’s strangeness, that he does things that are wrong wrong wrong but _right_.

The boy touches him softly on the arm. One soft tap. Press down, pull back. _Tap._  
It reverberates until the boy is the only thing ever.  
“What’s your name?”  
_Tyler._  
But names are not to be asked, or given. It is all he has left of himself, so he never gives it away. The bishops must know it, but they don’t have to ask, they just take.  
“Deman 1868811288.”  
The boy blinks once, twice, breathes out. The air vibrates, but no one else notices.  
“Surely that’s not what your parents called you.”  
Well no, but that is sarcasm. Sarcasm, is that it? Another word without meaning suddenly ascribed.  
Strange. Sarcasm.  
_No._  
“No.” Tyler is surprised his voice works.  
The boy isn’t. He nods, sharp, once. Blinks again. Leans on his shovel.  
“Well?” Tyler doesn’t know what his parents called him. Tyler is his name, as far as he knows, but he can’t quite remember—a face, a touch, a breathe, a single solitary note—his parents.  
He can’t remember how he got here. Was he always here? What is not here? When is he not here? This is why names are never given. They provoke loss, and hurt, and guilt, and hate, and—  
“Tyler.” He breathes in sharp. In. Out. It’s given now, gone.  
The boy smiles. _Smiles_. Tyler had forgotten smiles, but now that he’s seen one, he can’t quite imagine how he could have ever forgotten. It’s warmth, and light, and life, and a quirk of the cheek and it’s—

Yellow.

“I’m Josh.”  
Tyler nods. Can’t quite smile. Blinks. He is given now, entwined with Josh.

 _Yellow_.

***

Tyler can’t quite sleep. Quite being the important thing, because he can sleep, and he does sleep, but also, sleep never used to mean _dreams_ and now it does, and is it sleep then? Because he wakes now, wakes in fear, and terror, but also happiness and it’s—  
Yellow.  
Yellow, yellow, _yellow_. He always wakes with impressions of yellow behind his eyelids, and yellow petals in his hair, and Josh’s name on his lips, and tears coating his cheeks. He needs to remember something, but the something is untouchable, and sore, and this is why it is not quite sleep.  
It is too exhausting to be sleep.  
Still, everyday he digs, and sometimes he sees Josh, and sometimes he doesn’t, which is impossible, and strange, because everyone digs every day.

Josh doesn’t speak again for seven whole days. Tyler knows, because he counts the days now, and that’s strange, because he never used to care, would only care if he found a way to permanently stop, which is a thought that’s never completely articulated because it’s too _red_.  
But.  
Seven days, and then Josh sidles over again. Tyler has been watching.  
“You’ve been watching me.”  
Tyler’s mouth opens a little in astonishment and embarrassment as Josh smiles, grins, _giggles_. A laugh! Laughs, yes, now he remembers laughs, though he’s not sure how. His headaches worsens.  
He gets headaches now.  
Josh’s eyes crease. They are sad. Sad and _grey_.  
No! Josh must not be grey, he can’t be grey—

“Are you sad?”   
Josh blinks. His face loses expression, slides across the scale to _blank_. Not proper blank, not _there is no emotion here_ blank, because Tyler knows that blank well, wears it every day. This is blank so as not to be hurt, not to show hurt, and that startles Tyler.  
Josh blinks again. “You asked me a question.”  
Josh’s question is not a question, but Tyler nods anyway.

He has stopped digging.

Josh tilts his head. “I didn’t think you knew questions?”  
This _is_ framed as a question, but the words don’t _spell_ a question and Tyler can’t find the words for a reply.  
“Huh.” Josh pauses. “I’m not sad. I’m just trying to find you.” 

_I’m here_ , Tyler shouts, but the words don’t make it out of his brain, because fear has clamped up his throat. 

Josh nods. Josh understands, somehow. “You need a key.” 

Tyler scrunches his eyes, grasps his shovel tight, too tight.  
“Hey.” Josh slides a finger under his too tight hands, and it feels familiar and yellow, and perhaps Josh is in his dreams too? “Hey, stop, you’ll hurt your hands.”  
Tyler lets go of the shovel.  
It falls on Josh’s feet, but Josh doesn’t notice, or doesn’t react, though the air seems to vibrate again, and Tyler is cold and hot at the same time.  
“A key?”  
Josh’s expression shifts through _blank, concern, fear, hope_ —

Hope?

Tyler knows the word, and it comes to mind, but he’s never seen it portrayed on a face before, and he isn’t entirely sure what it might mean, just that it looks perfect on Josh’s, a mix between sad happy and fear elation.  
Josh’s face has settled tentatively into hope. “A key, yes, _yes_. When they touch your mind, you need a key, because a key is the only thing that can stop them from taking, from pulling.”  
Tyler knows _they_. Fear rises up his throat in a dark grey cloud and threatens to strangle, because now Josh has said that, he remembers somehow, why he knows they take, and when they did, and how it hurts and—  
“Hey,” Josh’s voice is soft and warm. His hands catch Tyler’s shoulders lightly as he drops his own shovel. “It’s okay.”  
Something warm, and soft and _safe_ is placed into his hands.  
“Use this as a key,” Josh says. He says it like that’s all he needs to say, that Tyler will suddenly understand what this means, what it is, how to use it.  
Strangely, he does.  
Josh turns away then, a slight limp in his walk. Tyler cannot see the quiet tears on his cheeks. 

The soft object is a daisy. 

It is yellow.

***

Tyler places the yellow daisies on his broken, rotten, _greying_ chest of drawers. They seem pale in the small dark room, eclipsed by the cold, biting, devouring white of the Niners’ lights each Deman must own, and yet they are the only part of the room that feel _alive_ , that pulse when he places a finger to their petals, that provide life and air and _yellow_ when he breathes in their scent.

Each time he wakes, the daisy from the previous day has died.

When he digs, Josh passes him a new one, each soft as the first, and as warm. Each time he takes them, he sees _hope_ glide across Josh’s face and away, taking flight. He imagines little yellow birds soaring through the clouds, velvet yellow petals falling from the sky. Petals in his hair, his mouth, his eyes, his veins.

He still cannot imagine how hope feels on a face, and each day, when he does not speak to Josh, Josh’s _hope_ transforms to _blank_ and it is the saddest song Tyler has ever tasted, but he cannot grow the yellow petals of hope when he is only digging down, down, _down_ into the cracking, greying dirt.

Little yellow petals would suffocate under his shovel.

He wonders perhaps if Josh will speak instead, for if Josh speaks again, Tyler might find his words unchained too.

Josh does not speak.

Tyler still does not quite sleep. Only, where once the _not quite_ consisted of petals, and Josh and unshed unsung tears, it now consists of sadness, and aching, and blood red dirt.  
The tears are still unshed, but not unsung; instead they scream behind his eyelids until his eyes might burst, until the aching is yanked back inside, until his blood is made of tears and dust and dread.  
When he wakes he does not feel yellow. He feels too much, too little, cracked and shrunken; thoughts and minds and memories press against his bones until he feels larger than his fragile skin, as though with a single touch it might split and bleed, as though the strange _dread/anticipation/emptiness_ is too much to be contained.

Josh speaks.

Does he speak?

Tyler isn’t sure anymore, whether Josh speaks, whether Josh exists, whether his grey, fearful, decaying mind created warmth and light and petals and yellow, yellow _hope_ , whether he is or was or will ever be.

The yellow daisies die and are not replaced.

Josh stops digging.

Tyler sleeps.

Tyler wakes and the window is open and it is dark.  
He never wakes at night, for dark is when things can be spoken that shouldn’t, where things can be remembered that oughtn’t to be, where the empty empty _emptiness_ is too much and not enough.

A boy is sitting on the window sill.

 _Josh_ is sitting on the window sill.

In the dull light of the bishops’ towers, of Nico and the Niners’ towers, Tyler _knows_ Josh. Not from the digging, or the strangeness, or the roll call, or the yellow daisies.

Josh has a yellow daisy tucked behind his ear. Tyler should ask him rational things. Things like: how did you know where I live? Things like: why are you here? Things like: are you going to hurt me, shut the window, don’t you know it’s cold, are you _real_?  
Instead of these rational things, these things which in some place, some time are right, right, right but _wrong_ , Tyler climbs out of bed, crosses the room to stand a foot from Josh, and says this:  
“I know you.”  
The words are open and round and as yellow as the daisies Josh embodies.  
Josh gapes.  
Hope cycles to pain and fear and a soft, soft emotion Tyler does not know, cannot possibly know, and yet knows.  
“I know _you_ ,” he repeats.

Josh kisses him.

The yellow daisy falls to the floor as Tyler winds his hands through Josh’s hair, but it doesn’t matter, because Tyler is consumed by yellow, and warmth and life and love and he _knows_ Josh, and Josh is _familiar_ and _special_ and _his._  
They collapse on the bed as they gasp for air, as though the only breathable air in the world must pass through the other’s lips, as though to disconnect for a moment will mean ceasing to exist.  
Closer, closer, _closer_ until Tyler cannot be sure which is Josh, and which is he, which velvety warm skin belongs to which boy, which _hope/light/love_ belongs to which mind.  
“I will save you, Tyler, I _will_ ,” Josh murmurs into Tyler’s neck and Tyler gets a memory, a real true memory, of a time and a place that existed, or will exist, of him saying to Josh _I will get out, Josh, I will_ , and it is all too much, and not enough, and desperate, for if he has forgotten this, if he has forgotten this promise to Josh, what else has he forgotten?

When Tyler wakes, Josh is gone. He is unsure if Josh was ever truly there, though a small breeze wafts through his open window. There are yellow petals scattered across his floor and a yellow daisy entwined in his hair.  
He no longer knows Josh, but he knows that he wants to, _needs_ to.  
There is a grey/green splotched jacket on the floor beside the Niner lights. A note lies on top of it and Tyler remembers that words can be caught and kept on paper for eternity, though he still cannot remember how, and his head aches to try.

The note is not yellow, but it feels yellow.

 _Wear the jacket tonight_.

***

The air feels intruding, watching, waiting, as Tyler digs and digs. The bishops are looking today, their cold, veiled eyes stinging his skin as his fingers blister against the shovel handle. They do not usually bother with the pits; why should they, when the Demans work as they should, and memories are forgotten as they should, and blank faces digest the knowledge that this is it forever and ever and ever, and there is no point to dropping the shovel, because there is nothing else.

Tyler drops his shovel.

He _knows_ there is something else, though its frames are still hazy, and the pictures it makes in his mind are still too raw to cradle.

Tyler feels the sweeping gaze of a bishop. He shakes his hands, as though shaking out a cramp, and picks up his shovel.  
He must _lie_. He must pretend there is nothing else, that Josh is not coming, that somehow, somewhere, somewhen, he does not know Josh.  
Tyler cannot remember how to lie, but he thinks of the yellow daisies, let them fill his mind with their strange endless colour, and he feels the bishop look away.

The dirt parts softly against his shovel and Tyler _remembers_.

He _chose_ to come here, to Dema. He cannot remember why. He does not want to know. He shoves the memory away.  It is _yellow yellow yellow._

Tyler puts the jacket on. It does not feel warm, and he does not feel sure, but he puts it on anyway. He packs a bag. He finds a pair of white—sunglasses?—and he puts those in too. He feels like he ought to know where they came from, that they are connected to Josh, but that memory is gone.  
Not hidden, not lost, not repressed, not _taken_. Simply gone. Empty.  
Tyler feels a tear wind down his cheek. He presses a fingertip to it, smears it across his cheek.  
Touches the finger to his lips. It shakes against the chapped surface.

He is afraid.

Like strange and hope and love, fear is something Tyler had forgotten, replaced with blankness, emptiness, acceptance.  
He thinks he surrendered fear willingly. He is ashamed.  
He thinks he surrendered love willingly. Of that he is even more ashamed, for he cannot imagine why he would ever.  
Somehow, fear and love are intertwined. They hurt and ache and prod and poke, swim around him in a confusing haze, but now that he has rediscovered them, he cannot imagine ever giving them up.

He isn’t sure he wants to leave.

What if the Tyler that exists _out there_ is the reason he became the Tyler that exists _in here_? What if he gave away those memories, and emotions, and experiences, because they were too painful to live with?

But that must mean Josh was painful.

Yellow daisies fill his mind.  
He could never give up Josh.  
Had he given up Josh?  
Fear clouds his mind as he glances once more around the room.  
_No_.  
If he had given up Josh, Josh would not have come looking.  
_I will save you Tyler. I will._  
Tyler suddenly remembers that someone had once told him he needed saving from himself.  
Was that Josh?  
He had given up Josh.

Tyler leaves the room, yellow daisy tucked behind his ear. He is going to find Josh, and he is going to give him a daisy, because Tyler suddenly knows hope, and he wants Josh to know hope too.

Josh is waiting with a yellow flame, yellow stripes across his jacket, a yellow bandana tied against his mouth, so that Tyler cannot read it, cannot hear it, and feels his face slide to blank.  
There are others with Josh, dressed like Josh, holding flames like Josh, herding him down a tunnel and away, until the yellow of the flames starts to feel dangerous rather than hopeful, and Tyler forgets that he knows Josh.

These are banditos.

How he knows this, he doesn’t know. He knows the bishops preach against them, and he knows what the bishops will do if he finds them.

The yellows change to greys and reds. The air becomes stifling. His breathing speeds up. He thinks he might fall, and fall forever, down and down, until he drowns in the dirt and ceases to exist, in the same way that the feelings and emotions and things that mean _Tyler_ have been extinguished.

He knows fear, and that is all he knows.

What he doesn’t know anymore is Josh, so that when Josh stops at the end of the tunnel, and turns to wrap Tyler in an embrace, hands threaded in his hair, mouth pressed to his neck, Tyler doesn’t move.

Josh steps back, rips the bandana from his face.  
“Tyler?”  
The tone is soft, questioning. He takes a daisy from behind Tyler’s ear. Tyler doesn’t remember how it got there. It is dying, its petals shrivelled black.  
“Tyler.” Now the tone is not questioning. It is sharp, and hard, and frightened. “Tyler, are you there?”

Tyler is nowhere. His hands shake.

“You’ve let go,” Josh whispers. “You’ve let _go_.”  
Tyler can’t speak. He has forgotten how to form words, which ways his mouth must move to bring his thoughts to life.

_I can’t I can’t I can’t._

“You’ve forgotten.” Josh is broken. He wilts, like the daisy, and the flame he is carrying goes out. The other banditos are silent.  
“You’ve forgotten _again_. I really thought—”  
Tyler does not know what Josh really thought. Tyler does not think. He stares at the boy that he ought to know, but doesn’t, and at the dead flower, and he blinks, and Josh’s face crumples, hope poisoned.

Tyler does not imagine little yellow birds taking flight. Instead, sleek black vultures caw in the distance and black feathers brush past his cheek.  
Josh watches the black feathers and his face slides to blank.  
“I can’t keep doing this, Tyler. I can’t. You have to want it.”  
Tyler doesn’t even know what Josh can’t do, doesn’t know what he must want. He doesn’t even want to know.

He should be digging.

He doesn’t know why he is here.

Josh pinches his nose. A single tear slides past his shaking fingers.  
He says: “You can’t even save yourself.”  
He says: “How were you supposed to save anyone else?”  
He says: “I can’t save you, Tyler.”  
He says: “Goodbye, Tyler.”  
Then a bandito screams: _BISHOPS_.

Josh runs, glances back, tears stream down his cheeks, black feathers catch in his hair, black ash singes his cheeks.

Tyler watches them run.

He doesn’t remember tears.

A bishop grasps him by the back of his neck. Numbness invades his senses.  
**Why are you crying**  
Bishops don’t ask. They only demand. Tyler doesn’t know why they demand. He doesn’t know why his face is wet. He wonders why the strange boy cries. He wonders what crying means. He wonders why the floor is decorated with dead daisies.  
**You will give it back to us  
**Tyler agrees, though he does not know what to.

Tyler screams.

They are taking it, pulling it, tearing it from existence, they are taking Josh, and yellow, and everything that was ever anything, and anything that ever mattered.  
As if from within his own grave, he distantly remembers daisies, but that is a mistake, because that makes the bishops angry, makes _Nico_ angry, and suddenly it is not just his mind that is _shredding/tearing/shattering/rending_ but his body and his skin and his bones and he feels warm liquid drip between his clenched fists and tied wrists and his tongue tastes metallic and the room smells of iron and despair and loss and black black grief.

Though they have never taken the very core of him before, have never stolen his name, he feels as though they could, because he gave his name to the boy, he gave the one part of him he had left to give, and now it is known, and the bishops can slash it from his grasp, stab it from his heart.

Tyler thinks this is what dying truly is, what being obliterated truly feels like, because no matter how tight he holds to the daisies, no matter how much he screams and begs and cries and bleeds, they rip the flowers from his mind.

**Daisies**

Tyler does not know what a daisy is. Tyler does not know who he is, or when he is, or where he is. A black hole is swallowing anything that ever was, anything that ever meant _Tyler_.  
Now he is empty.

***

Deman 1868811288 lies stiffly on the bed. He is hurt, and unwell, and he does not think it is simply from digging, but he does not know what else it could be from. He is scarred and slashed and scabbed all up and down his arms, and his nose aches, and the scab on his cheek still bleeds if he moves the wrong way.

His head has never hurt more.

He still goes to dig, for what else can he do?

He still doesn’t know what they dig for.

A boy with a nose ring approaches him as he digs. He has not seen the boy before; figures he is just another Deman that he has not paid attention to.   
The boy speaks, and Deman 1868811288 stops digging to watch the boy’s mouth move.  
He has not seen that before.  
“You’re—” The boy’s face shakes and gives out. “You got hurt, bad.”  
Deman 1868811288 blinks. He is not sure about that. He is not sure about anything. He knows his body aches, but he does not know the difference between _aches_ which is the existence he occupies and _hurt_ which implies it was done to him.  
“Tyler?”  
Deman 1868811288 glances around, slowly and carefully finds the words he needs to convey the ask.  
“Who is Tyler?”  
The boy’s face completely crumples with an emotion Deman 1868811288 does not recognise; he recognises nothing and no one.  
“They took you. They _took_ you.”

There is a pause as the two study each other’s faces.

Deman 1868811288 blinks again. He has never had such a strange conversation.  
In fact, he has never had a conversation.  
In fact, he has never been able to use the word _strange_ before.  
He decides that is what the boy is. Strange. He blinks again.

The boy squeezes his eyes shut and water leaks out, drawing clear soft lines in his dirt smudged face.  
“I suppose this really is goodbye then.”  
Deman 1868811288 tilts his head. He is not sure what a goodbye entails, but it sounds sad.  
Well, it sounds as though sad ought, or at least, how his mind says sad ought to be, but whether it is a thing that is felt, he is not sure.

The boy’s face becomes _blank_. It does not suit the boy. He holds out a strange petaled object. It is not grey, but Deman 1868811288 cannot name what it might be if it is not grey.

He takes the object. It prickles against his injured palms and he drops it in the dirt.  
He resumes digging.  
Soon the object is buried, suffocated by the grey, just like everything else, and everyone else.  
The boy’s eyes become greyer as he watches Deman 1868811288 bury the object. He blinks.  
Breathes. In. Out. Clenches his fists. Nods.  
The air surrounding the boy stops vibrating. His strangeness fades.  
He walks away.  
He does not come back to dig.

Deman 1868811288 does not notice.

***

Deman 1868811288 does not dream. He sleeps, only sleeps. He does not dream, does not know what it means to dream.

When he wakes, his head aches worse than ever.

There are strange soft objects scattered around his room, across his bed, crushed on the floor.  
The same odd petaled object that the boy handed him to be buried days, weeks, months? ago lies on the pillow beside his face.  
A flower? Is that what it is?  
He stares at it. He stares and stares and stares. His head aches and aches and aches.  
It is not grey, he _knows_ it is not grey. It is not red, or blue, or pink, or orange, or green but he cannot remember what it _is_.

He starts to cry, for he has remembered that to cry means you are sad, and he is sad, he has remembered how to be sad, because his head hurts so much it might burst, and he cannot remember the precious flower’s colour.

He screams.

It is within his head, but it is barred from finding, and to go near it is to poke a raw burn with a sharp stick.  
But he must know. He must _know_.

He reaches for it. He screams and screams and screams and he yanks at his hair and tears flow freely down his cheeks, and he chokes on the petals of the precious flower, and then his fingers scrabble at the floor until they bleed, and he strains and strains and the burned memory vibrates with pain.

He throws up all over the petals.  
He grimaces, acidic taste still boiling his tongue, soaking his mouth.  
_Yellow._  
He is triumphant.  
He passes out.

When Deman 1868811288 comes to, he has remembered yellow, and he has remembered Tyler. He’s not entirely sure who Tyler is, but the name rings true, so that means it must belong to someone. It does not belong to the strange boy. He is not Tyler.  
He goes to dig.  
He frowns as his digs. What are they digging for?

 _To forget_.

The answer comes suddenly, with a searing pain behind his eyes.  
They are digging to forget, the repetitive motions ensuring they never stray outwards into dangerous memories. They are not digging to find anything. They are digging to forget themselves.

Deman 1868811288 stops going to dig. The bishops do not come for him. Perhaps they think him lost to his loss of remembering.

He sits on the floor of his room, day in, day out, passing through awake and asleep, conscious and unconscious, seeking the answers he has been digging to bury, forgetting that a normal existence once did not include pain, and fear, and elation, with every breath in and out. In. Out. In. Out.

He remembers that he is Tyler.

One morning he wakes and cannot breathe. He coughs to clear his throat of yellow petals and remembers.

Yellow daisies.

Yellow daisies, soft fingertips, and _Josh_.

He screams then, and cries, and slams his fist against the wall, because he had forgotten Josh. Not once, not twice, but again and again, each time reaching a little further, failing a little harder, until he reached so far and fell so hard that Josh hurt too much to continue.

He still cannot remember why he chose to come here, but he knows he must make another choice, and it has to be a choice he makes alone.  
Josh cannot force him to remember, to leave. He must choose to leave, and choose to remember, and he vows to himself that he will.

Tyler finds the jacket, bloodstained and ripped, buried under his bed. This time when he wears it, it feels warm, and he feels yellow.

***

It is cold outside the tunnel, but the jacket keeps him warm, and he is not afraid, for his pockets are full of yellow daisy petals.  
He marvels at how easy it was to leave Dema, once he had made the choice, how much the bishops rely on the helplessness of their citizens, on the knowledge their citizens are there to forget, to obey, to never remember the painful pasts and emotions they left behind.

Tyler has a feeling he was sent to help them find themselves, find the will to remember, and to live.

Instead, he decided to forget too. Resign himself to the grey, and the ease of never having to think for himself, to not have the live the existence he feared.

He is worried that he knew he would forget, and went purposefully, lying to himself and abandoning Josh.

He is ashamed, for if he was sent to save them, and instead he forgot himself, he not only failed himself, but he failed the everyone else.

Tyler is not sure where he is going. He does not particularly care. Josh will find him, or he won’t, but he is free to live and die and love and ache without the bishops breathing down his neck, taking and pulling and surrendering everything he is.

He has been walking for years or days or months or seconds but his feet keep moving forward and his lungs keep breathing in the air, fresh air, air that lifts and sparkles and burns down his throat as it heals.

He remembers red red orange heat, devouring, burning; he remembers black black gaping, a burnt out shell; he remembers silver, and beads of blood, and taking a razor to his hair.  
Did this happen here, and now, or then and there?  
Was it him, or them, or never, or still to come?  
He staggers and falls, with exhaustion, or perhaps not exhaustion, for that is physical. Perhaps it is an overwhelming of the senses; an inability to process the knowingness of the space, the once knowing and once forgetting and trying to tie the two into one memory, the two Tylers, the two not-quite-Tylers, and Josh.

When he wakes, he sits and stares and squints and shivers, with cold, with heat, with _longing_.

He blinks.

He is walking through a brown speckled green gap—a space, an emptiness and lack— between two towering cliffs, hills, rocks, mountains?  
There is frigid water beneath his dusty boots, and the sky is grey grey grey, but it is not the grey of Dema, the oppressing, squeezing, choking grey.  
It is soft, like the velvet petals, and strong with promise, of future rain, of sunlight, of blue blue enveloping sky.

He hesitates, because for a moment the air vibrates, in the same way Josh vibrates, in the way that makes him _real/different/present_ and Tyler’s hands shake uncontrollably.

He glances up. They are on the hills; though who and where and when _they_ are hasn’t yet quite come back to him.

He keeps walking.

The air stops vibrating, and he cannot move—cannot move, or has forgotten how?  
There is a white horse, though white is the wrong description, because white should be pure, and this moment is anything but.  
There is a not-quite-white horse, and on it sits a red robed rider. A Niner, a Bishop, Nico himself?

Why has he come? Why does he care?

The horse gallops closer and closer and Tyler cannot move, resigns himself to pain, to falling, to ending his freedom and remembering.  
The horse does not hit him.  
It stops, or so Tyler assumes, for his eyes are closed now, and he has forgotten how to open them.

He can feel Nico approaching; not through sound or footsteps or whispering wind, but through the tightening of a noose around his mind and the slow steady beat of a heart that _gives up gives up gives up_.

He feels cold fingers stroke his throat, feels remembering draining from his body as the rain might smudge and ruin beautiful pen stroke on a page.  
He forgets what he is doing; knows only that to follow the bishop is to stay alive, and to turn from the bishop means a loss.  
A loss of what, he does not know, but he thinks maybe purpose, or serenity, or not having to choose.

Tyler hears a scream, or feels a scream, or tastes a scream, and the air vibrates so much it is unbearable, so unbearable, his teeth ache and his hands shake and he wants to tear out his hair.

He looks up. It is raining, but not with rain. Instead, hundreds, thousands, millions of velvety petals, of soft yellow daisy petals, are falling through the air, dancing on the wind, catching against his cheeks, his skin, his cold cold neck.

His heart pounds out one rhythm and one rhythm only. It goes like this:

_Josh Josh Josh Josh Josh._

He backs away. He runs. He sprints as far and as fast as he can, because never again is he giving up Josh, never again does he want to forget the yellow and the warmth and the light.  
Never again does he want to break his promise.  
_I will get out, Josh. I will_.  
He falls spectacularly. Bangs his head against the ground. Feels tears slip down his cheeks as his mind slips into nothingness.

_Please don’t let them get me._

***

He wakes once more to flames, and the smell of burning, and he wonders if he has split, one Tyler in where he was, one Tyler in where he went.

But there is no burnt out shell, and his hair is not shaved, and this is not a memory, this is the creation of now.

Josh is beside him, eyes creased with worry, but worry for Tyler, not worry about being caught, because Tyler remembers the difference on Josh’s face.  
“You’re awake,” is all Josh says. It is guarded, and careful, but Tyler hears longing, and hope.

Tyler smiles.

His chapped lips stretch painfully into the unfamiliar motion, but he remembers how a smile ought to feel, now. 

“I know you. I have always known you.”

Josh smiles now, so big and so unreserved and so unbelieving that Tyler wants to cry, tears of yellow petals and grasping hope. 

Josh kisses him and Tyler remembers them all, not just this kiss or the last, but all the moments they have shared, and cried and bled, all the moments that make them _Tyler_ and _Josh_ and _one_ and _together_.

Josh’s hair is daisy yellow, somehow, and that is how Tyler knows that he is safe, and he is free.

 

**Author's Note:**

> yep, Tyler's Dema ID number is his and Josh's birthdays combined. Sue me :)


End file.
